The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

“Oh, Pia.” She yanked the plug of the waffle iron from the outlet before answering the question. “If you must know, and I suppose you’ll soon find out, considering what a hotbed of gossip this town is, your father went round to Herr Duster’s.”

“Herr Duster’s? Was it his windows that were broken?”

“Not windows,” said my mother. “One window. And yes, it was his. It was Jorg Koch who did it. Why am I not surprised?” she added with heavy irony.

“Why did Jorg Koch break his window? Was it an accident?”

“No.”

My mother picked up a cloth and began to wipe down the countertop, which was splattered with waffle batter. With her back to me, and her elbow working like a piston, she did not look very approachable. All the same, I persisted.

“Why did he break it?”

“Because he…” She paused, turned around, and looked at me. “Because some of the kind citizens of this delightful town have decided that Herr Duster is a criminal.”

“Hmmm.” I thought about it. “Frau Kessel says it was probably Herr Duster who took Katharina Linden and the other girls. She said some girls disappeared in Bad Munstereifel when Papa was at school too, and it was Herr Duster then as well.”

“Pia.” Now my mother’s gaze had acquired a laserlike intensity. “Frau Kessel is a poisonous old-well, never mind. I don’t want you listening to her stories about who has done what in this town, and I particularly don’t want to find out you’ve been passing them on to anyone else. If it wasn’t for her and her cronies, we probably wouldn’t have had a bloody lynch mob on the streets last night. She’s a witch.”

The literal-minded side of my personality, inherited from my father, struggled to digest this last nugget of information.

“Didn’t Herr Duster do it? Take the girls, I mean?”

“Oh, Pia. I don’t know. Nobody knows. And even if he did, it still wouldn’t be right for people to just go round there and attack him. In civilized places,” she added more to herself than to me, “people are innocent until proved guilty.”

“But if he did do it…?”

“Then it has to be handled properly. The police have to question him, and if it looks as though there is enough evidence that he did it, then it has to go to court. Do you know what that means?”

I nodded.

“And a court can’t decide to punish anyone unless there’s proof that they did something wrong. You can’t just decide that someone looks guilty, or that you think they did it. You have to be sure. And being sure means you have to have proof.”

“Like what?”

“Pia, I hardly think the breakfast table is the place to be discussing forensic science,” said my mother drily. I was used to her occasional digressions into Baroque vocabulary, so I simply waited for her to explain.

“In this case we don’t even know exactly what happened to Katharina or those other girls. It’s always possible that they went with someone quite happily and that they are still…” My mother stopped herself. “That they will eventually show up safe and well. And then how would everyone feel if they had turned up on Herr Duster’s doorstep and beaten him up?” She sighed. “Isn’t it about time you were off to school? Another five minutes and you won’t be in before the bell rings.”

I slipped out from behind the table. “But, Mama, what would be proof?” I persisted, reluctant to leave without closing the conversation to my satisfaction.

“Well, it’s things like someone actually seeing the person committing a crime… or maybe finding stolen goods in someone’s house,” said my mother.

“Or a body?” I asked.

“Or a…? Pia, I don’t think anyone is going to find dead bodies in anyone’s house in Bad Munstereifel. Can we drop the subject? It’s gruesome. And some little people”-she nodded meaningfully toward Sebastian-“are starting to understand more and more these days.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Reluctantly, I went into the hallway to find my coat and the backpack that had replaced the now-babyish Ranzen. It was raining outside and I had three minutes to get to school before the bell rang. With a sigh I stepped out into the rain.

Chapter Thirty-five

Boris says he’s definitely the one.”

“How does he know?”

Stefan and I were sitting on a wall in the Gymnasium courtyard. The stone felt glacial even through the thick jeans I was wearing. Stefan seemed unconcerned by the cold, even though his jacket was too thin for the time of year.

“He says it’s obvious.” Stefan shrugged. “Everyone’s heard the rumors going around, about Herr Schiller’s daughter. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, he says.”

“That doesn’t sound much like Boris-it sounds more like Frau Kessel,” I said.

“Doch, well, I guess that’s where it started,” agreed Stefan. He kicked the heels of his sneakers against the wall, thinking.

“My mother says there has to be proof before you can say somebody did something, like a crime or something,” I said.

“If he took Herr Schiller’s daughter…” said Stefan.

“But they didn’t ever get him for that, did they?” I pointed out. “He didn’t go to prison or anything. And Herr Schiller’s supposed to have stuck up for him. Surely he wouldn’t do that if he thought his own brother had taken his daughter away?”

“Who knows? Grown-ups, sometimes I think they’re all crazy,” said Stefan with feeling. “If we were both grown-up, twenty or something, and you went off and married someone else, like maybe Thilo Koch-” Here he broke off, laughing at my disgusted expression. “Well, I wouldn’t kidnap your kids and murder them.”

“If they were Thilo Koch’s kids maybe you should,” I said, shuddering at the thought. “Anyway, it’s still just a rumor. Nobody ever even found the body.”

“Maybe she just ran away,” suggested Stefan.

“Nee.” I shook my head emphatically. “Would you? It would be too cool having Herr Schiller as a father, if he were younger, I mean. Imagine all the stuff he could tell you. That one about the fiery man, that was really horrible. It was a shame you didn’t hear it.”

“Hmmm.” Stefan raked a hand through his dirty blond hair. “Pity we can’t ask him about what happened.”

“No way,” I said regretfully. “If he didn’t get angry, my mother would when she found out.”

There was a silence as we both pondered this. Finally, Stefan said, “Well, someone needs to find proof.”

“I suppose the police are doing that,” I said dubiously.

“They haven’t come up with anything so far, or they would’ve arrested him.”

“They did arrest him once,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but they had to let him go, didn’t they? If they’d found something they wouldn’t have done that.” He paused, then added, “In fact, according to Boris, that time at Herr Duster’s house Herr Wachtmeister Tondorf said they didn’t arrest him, he was just helping them or whatever. You remember, when you were in England?”

A hot flame of guilt spurted up inside me at the memory of the telephone calls I had made from Oma Warner’s